Scenario #9

There's a student who comes into class and just doesn't care. We try to get him to learn and do work but he says it's pointless. I discovered that this student doesn't have a father and his mother is on every drug imaginable. How can I expect this student to do any work at all or even give a shit about anything we do in school when he has to think about where he's sleeping at night. Everything I can teach him in a classroom means nothing, why should he even care?

Scenario #8

You're teaching a freshman health class and you're a quarter way through your first semester. You have just recently mastered all your students names, but you are still getting to know who they are and their personalities. Your unit has shifted from healthy relationships to abusive relationships. You've got one student who in particular usually is pretty well- behaved but during this unit starts to act out and play the class clown. One day, while you were covering sexual abuse he makes a comment that makes you believe he could have been abused. What do you do? How would you respond to the students comment? Would you take them aside after class and talk to him even if your relationship with the student is still not matured? What are your responsibilities / actions as a teacher in this situation?

Scenario 7

Bob and Jack are both in 8th grade. They were assigned the same homeroom and are in the same class block. Bob and Jack both have kinisthetic needs that don't always seem to be met during the school day due to time constraints. Bob and Jack both come from families with low socio-economic backgrounds and they share many of the same interests. Perhaps, due to age and vicinity to one another, the boys are always antagonizing the other. Oftentimes, though the boys poke and shove the other (including in the classroom), this antagonizing is friendly. Both boys also seem to share the common link of anger problems. Due to family issues, both of the boys carry a lot of anger with them and can be volatile at times.

One day, each boy is having a "bad day". The teacher is standing out in the hall, in front of her classroom, greeting students and monitoring the hall. The boys walk in and shove each other a little, per usual. All of a sudden, one boy goes too far and a fight breaks out. A student (we'll call him John) jumps in to separate the boys, and successfully pulls the two apart. The teacher, having been absent for most of the brawl, tells John to let go Jack, who he's holding. John obeys, and the fight between Bob and Jack starts again. After much confusion, the teacher tries to break up the boys. She can't. They are angry and physically, they are too much for her to manipulate. So she discreetly asks John to separate the boys again, which John does. When the boys are separated, the teacher has a few of the "stronger" students escort the boys to the office where the principal can be responsible for disciplining them.

How could this situation have been prevented? There seemed to be warning signs all over the place. Also, what could a teacher have done in this situation if s/he did not have a student with John's strength and willingness to help?

Scenario 6

A classroom situation I had was a freshman student who absolutely refused to do anything he did not want to do. The frustrating part was not that he would not participate but that his teachers allowed it to happen because it was better that he was at school than at his home. It was frustrating because (1) the student was not learning and (2) the student obviously had a horrible homelife.

Scenario 5

It was during the last week of my practicum class and I had observed a student throwing a chair in the cafeteria as well as many other teachers that had seen this. I wasn’t sure that if I should approach the student or let a teacher take care of it. I looked up and saw a teacher walking towards the student. Before the teacher got to the student, the lunch bell rang and he headed for the door and left the cafeteria. I then saw the teacher go after the student.

I started to walk back to my classroom and when I got to the top of the stairs, I saw the student and the teacher talking. The teacher told the student that he needed to go see the principal and that she would go with him. He was outraged and started to swear at the teacher. At this point I started to walk over to them because the teacher was a little lady. He then took off down the stairs before I made it to them. I asked her if she needed help and she said she was fine. I then watched them go to the principal’'s office. In this situation what do you do as a practicum student?

Question from Dr. Theresa . . . In this situation, what do you do as a teacher if you were in the exact same situation?

Scenario 4

You are teaching one of your classes, when all of a sudden, an outraged Mother comes through the door and knocks down everything in her way. The parent's child and you have had a difficult time lately, due to disciplinary problems in the classroom. You have tried to set up meetings with the parents, but they refuse to come in, they just claim that the child is not at fault. You have just given the student another detention that day, and they had to call home. The mother is sick of you giving her child detention. She is yelling everything in the book at you and threatening to hurt you. It seems there is no way to calm her down, and there is a possibility that any move might make her go into attack mode which would threaten the students. What do I do?

Scenario 3

If you are in front of the entire class trying to correct a pretest so that everyone knows what to do for the test, what do you do if you have one student who is just yelling out all of the answers, sometimes before you even ask the question and the rest of the class is sitting there bored out of their minds. You don't want to ask the student not to answer because he is the type of student who if you did that he would probably find some other way to be disruptive and then he wouldn't be paying attention at all. Plus, chances are that if he were not yelling out the answers, no one else would have.

Scenario 2

I was walking in the hallway while classes were changing. I happened to glance to my left and two students who were a couple feet away were all over each other. I have zero experience on how to handle this type of situation and I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of students, so I chose to ignore the situation. Other students were around these students and the moment was awkward. The students did notice my presence, however they didn't know who I was; just that I had noticed them and probably looked as if I was irked.

Scenario 1

I encountered a student during my time in the classroom who is constantly trying to get my attention and the attention of the teacher. I know that he could be a very good student but he does not use his time wisely and is sometimes disruptive when the other students are working. I think that he needs constant attention and, unfortunately, finds a negative way to do it most times. He also feels that he needs to be the class comedian. I tried not addressing his antics in the hopes that he would stop but it has continued for the entire three weeks. Most times when he is acting up a lot, the teacher is outside of the classroom but he will still be mildly disruptive even when she and I are both there. After asking him to quiet or settle down once or twice in a class he is usually pretty good. It would be my goal for him to be able to come into class and get to work without the usual 5 or 10 minutes of his antsy stand up comedy routine. Is there a good way to achieve this goal?